


Caught Staring

by mysid



Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: Gen, Homophobia, Marauders' Era
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-01-11
Updated: 2017-01-11
Packaged: 2018-09-16 17:35:59
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 940
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/9282656
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/mysid/pseuds/mysid
Summary: The idea of a teenage Sirius in a communal shower with other boys popped into my head one day.  Before I knew it, the poor boy was caught staring.





	

**Author's Note:**

> Originally, I was going to set this in the showers of the Quidditch locker room, but then I remembered that there is no such place in canon. (It's a pretty popular place in fanon though.) So, let's just set this in a Gryffindor boys' shower room, shall we? 
> 
> Sirius, etc. are JKR's, not mine.

**Caught Staring**

"Oi! Black! Stop staring at my friend's arse!" Tidmarsh shouted a moment before he wrenched off the taps. 

Startled—he hadn't been staring—at least not deliberately, just distractedly—Sirius ducked his own head under the shower spray as a pretext for turning away slightly. He _was_ slightly aroused, but not enough to be incriminating under the circumstances. He hoped he could pull off sounding nonchalant.

"Don't be ridiculous," he muttered with a scowl.

Next to Tidmarsh, Harris finished rinsing shampoo from his hair and spared a glance for Sirius at the other end of the shower room. "Was he ogling me?"

"Yes, the bloody pervent," Tidmarsh said as he wrapped a towel securely around his waist.

"I was not," Sirius said at the same moment. "I was just thinking about the essay I have to write for McGonagall."

"Methinks he doth protest too much," Harris said with a grin. "We all know these aristo-types are all as bent as paperclips."

Sirius had no idea what paperclips were, but the insult was clear enough without that knowledge.

"Get off it," he growled. "Haven't you ever just stared off into space?" He found that he didn't even have to fake his annoyance at the two sixth-year students. He really had been staring without seeing. It seemed unfair that he should be called on that rather than the furtive looking he sometimes did in the showers.

"I don't stare at boys' arses while I'm doing it," Tidmarsh snapped back at the slightly younger boy. He grabbed Harris's towel and held it out, waiting impatiently for his dorm mate to finish showering so they could both leave Sirius's presence.

Harris finally turned off his own taps. "Oh, let him look," Harris said as he wiped his hands back over his head, squeezing the excess water out of his hair. "Just don't expect me to bend over to pick up the soap," he said with a quick malevolent glance at Sirius.

Sirius kept his focus tightly on the soap and flannel in his own hands, creating more and more white foam from the pale yellow bar. In his peripheral vision, Harris was making a slow production of drying his limbs with his towel before finally wrapping the damp cloth around his waist. He was daring Sirius to peak, but Sirius did not. 

Harris wasn't even _that_ good looking. He was tall and lithe, yes, but with no muscle to speak of. Tidmarsh was actually more fit, but cursed with a spotty face and enormous ears.

Harris was holding forth on a supposed tendency toward queerness in purebloods. "...want to keep the bloodlines pure, you can't take it far outside the family, so anyone in the family becomes fair game. Black here has probably been buggered by half his male relatives, so it's really not his fault that he's turned out bent."

Sirius hoped his skin's flush from the heat of the water would sufficiently disguise any blushing. Just two years ago, an older distant cousin _had_ cornered him at a family wedding and fondled him through his robes. Sirius could still recall the sour smell of wine on the man's breath as he'd alternately whispered endearments and then threats to ensure Sirius's silence. The threats weren't what had kept him silent; it was the knowledge that he'd already begun to have sensual dreams which featured men, and his fear that his cousin had sensed it. Sirius sometimes wondered how much further his cousin would have gone if Regulus hadn't come looking for him.

"I have pureblood relatives," Tidmarsh reminded his dorm mate in annoyance. "None of them are perverts."

"Well, not _all_ are, of course," Harris quickly amended, "but families like the Blacks who see themselves..."

Sirius ducked under the shower spray again to drown Harris out. Five years ago, the Sorting Hat had placed him in Gryffindor, and most of his housemates still treated him like a misplaced Slytherin. Sometimes he thought he was.

Their voices moved off in the direction of the anteroom, where students could undress and dress, having left dry clothes on wooden benches. A sudden whoop of triumph forced Sirius to pay attention again.

"Aha! Arriving for a little rendezvous with the pervert?" Harris asked. "I told you that purebloods tend to be bent."

"What the hell are you on about?" a new voice asked. With a sinking heart, Sirius realized it was James. The only thing worse than being teased by the sixth years was to get one of his friends dragged into it. 

"C'mon, let's go," Tidmarsh said.

"Not yet," Harris said. "Don't you want to know which one of them gets to 'drop the soap' for the other one?"

"No. C'mon."

James entered the shower room wearing nothing but a towel slung over his shoulder. Sirius always thought James looked a bit odd without his glasses. 

"What the hell was that all about?" James asked as he hung his towel on a hook where it was likely to stay dry.

Sirius almost said, "I have no idea," but quickly decided to say instead, "Harris is queer and fancies Tidmarsh. He's dropping hints left and right that he wants him, but Tidmarsh is too dense to get it." After all, turn about is fair play.

James stared at Sirius for a moment, squinting in a hopeless attempt to bring his friend's face into focus, and then shook his head saying, "Thank God I'm not in _that_ dorm."

"Me too," Sirius said as he finally turned off the taps. He didn't even _look_ at James once before leaving the shower room to dress.

 

_—Written April 2007_


End file.
